Milestones & Grief Creep

"Sanctuary" © Sarah Treanor

This past week one of the most amazing things happened to me that has happened in my "after" life. I was selected as a finalist for a magazine cover of an art magazine - for one of my photographs that tells part of my grief journey - and ended up winning the final vote. It is the first time my art will be published on a magazine cover. This is huge for my fledgling career as an artist. And more-so it is huge because more people going through loss will see my grief series and hopefully find something of their own story there.

I couldn't believe how many people voted and shared. Thousands of fans and friends and family all rallied behind me to make this happen. My gym shared it on their business page. My mother-in-law's employees all voted and shared it. People I don't even know. Old college classmates. Old coworkers. So many left comments about the grief journey they are on, and how one particular image or another of mine spoke directly to them. People bought prints - one, a counselor, who will be putting up the photo in her grief counseling room. It has been unreal.

Suddenly I have found myself looking back in a different way than I have before. Looking back and realizing that I've gotten somewhere I do want to be. Before my fiancé died, none of this was here. I was working in a cubicle, feeling trapped and unhappy and scared because I had no clue how to ever really go for my dream of being an artist. Leaving a full time job was the MOST terrifying thing I could possibly imagine. Before he died, this idea of being an artist was all just wishful thinking… a far away notion that he and I would often talk about over afternoon lunches and morning coffee.

Little did I know that his death was going to take me on a journey I could have never imagined for myself. Not an EASY journey… but somehow, a far more meaningful one. His death was the catalyst in my leaving that career behind. It was the thing that shook me awake and made me see that if he could die for his dreams, then I'd better get started living for mine.

It's been a horrible and agonizing and fear-filled journey that I wouldn't wish on anyone (you all know this!), and it STILL is every step of the way. Somehow though, during these two and a half years I have found some sort of really meaningful beginning. One that is far more meaningful to me than the life I was living before he died.

It isn't the one I wanted - not like THIS. I never wanted to make art about the death of the most important person in my world. Or death in general. But when you lose your mother at age 9, your father at age 26 and then your fiancé at age 29… it begins to feel like someone is trying to tell you something. I finally decided to listen and allow death into my art… nothing has felt more healing.

I'm learning that by having his death and him as the center of what I'm putting myself into, it is giving it a solid foundation. On the days when I feel scared shitless and still have NO CLUE how I will ever make any REAL money doing this (living off my savings, betting it all on this crazy dream right now). On days when I feel lost and like I'm floating… knowing that he is at the center of this work is what helps me to be able to keep faith going. It helps me to know with all my heart that this work is valuable and meaningful, because all of my love for him rests within these images. And I know without a doubt that will mean something to other people. Clearly, it is.

The days after the big win have been of course an emotional roller coaster - just like any major event in our lives without our person. I call it grief creep… we all know it well. The aftermath of anything exciting - the quiet moments when the pain slips back in to steal the spotlight. As the week has progressed, I think I've just gotten sadder. Sad that he is not here to celebrate with me. Heartbroken that no one actually thought to take me out for a celebratory dinner or drink for this monumental moment in my life. No one. Which leaves me with the painful reminder that the person who was sharing a life WITH me is not here… and that I no longer have someone to be excited for me in the way that only your partner can be. And I miss that so much. And I miss him.

And suddenly, the whole milestone event of the magazine cover begins to pale in comparison to the feelings of sadness and grief. Don't you hate that? When the grief just seems to swallow up the good stuff - no matter how hard you try to not let it? I know I do. I've been fighting it all week - trying so hard to hold on to the good, and trying not to let in the sadness. I know… I have to let the sadness in. It needs to be felt as much as the joy. I will let it in, but dammit, I don't want to.

PS. A big thank you to anyone here who may have happened to vote for my image. You made a huge difference in my world this week.

To view my grief series "Still, Life" you can visit my blog here.

Still, Life

"Hope" ©Sarah Treanor

This week has been a whirlwind for me. I met a fellow artist who, upon seeing my photographic series on grief, asked to write this feature about it for a creative blog he writes for. That one blog post at this point has led to around 6 other blogs contacting me to share my story and the project… which has resulted in hundreds of people sharing the project via Facebook and Twitter. It has been certainly one of the most memorable and moving weeks of slogging through the past two years since my fiancé died.

To catch you up, this is a year-long self portrait series I have been doing since February called "Still, Life". Each weekly image - which I share on my blog - explores and expresses the emotional and psychological journey of living on after the death of someone you love. It touches on aspects like desperation and isolation, hopelessness and hope, fear and trust. It has been a grueling and often frustrating project. I've wanted to quit MANY times. I've cursed enough over it to make a sailor blush. I've had total emotional breakdowns over it. But, I've needed it project to survive. It's given me something to put myself into each day… like being able to climb into a boat on this stormy sea of grief. Still in the storm, but with something to hold me and help give me some small bit of direction.

So here I am this week, reading kind words written by other people about this work I've poured myself into for the past nine months. A project that could have never come out of me had he not died. It is so bittersweet - but my God, it's beautiful. The first two years were deeply survival. But these first 5 months of the third year since he died, it feels like he lives on in every step forward I take. The bitter is beginning to fall away, and leaving more and more sweetness over time.

As I read the headline to one of the articles this week - "Photographer Takes Moving Self-Portraits To Cope With Her Fiance’s Death"- and the article itself, I realized for the first time that this project is actually about a lot more than I ever knew. The images themselves may speak of pain and loss, but the project as a whole speaks of other things. It is about healing by making something meaningful out of loss. It is about love, and how unbreakable love is. Even when death tries to take it, it cannot be taken from us. Not ever. Finally, it is about the most important lesson he taught me in our three short but beautiful years together; Never give up on your dreams.

He worked for years to achieve his dream of being a commercial helicopter pilot. The man loved flying more than I've seen anyone love anything. Like any big dream, there were plenty of big fears along the way. He feared he wasn't competent enough. He feared the responsibility of transporting others safely. He feared dying in a crash, of course - which is ultimately how he did die. They were some very real fears. But he never let it stop him. I was lucky enough to be by his side to watch it all unfold. To watch him pass every check ride and gain every certification and land his first commercial job. There was a deep joy in him that last year as his dreams came to fruition. A joy unlike any I've witnessed so closely before. Watching his journey was the fuel that led me to chase my own dreams to be an artist. His death is what ignited it.

I feel now that this whole project is far more about him than me. It is all the things he stood for and the things taught me in life. And all the things he is teaching me still, in death. How he is showing me that still, even after all of this, there is life. And love. And that it is my job to get up every day, live life, and be love. My job to look for beauty still wherever I can find it. My job to decide to make something out of this crazy, awful, shitty, unbelievable journey. And my job to create my own meaning out what life throws at me.

I am completely overwhelmed to even be a part of it all right now. In deep gratitude that he came into my life 5 years ago… just a friend, who turned into more, and who has changed the entire course of my life now in ways I could not have ever imagined. The fact the just one person can come into your life and have THAT much impact still amazes me. I cannot help but be grateful that he changed my life and is still changing it today.

Where We're Going

He died on a Tuesday. I can still remember screaming those animal sounds into the phone, tones I'd never heard come out of myself. Deep, guttural defiances... yelled at his dad on the other end of the line – every cell of me rejecting the words from his broken voice, “No baby, he's not okay...” The room is spinning. I remember flashes only. I remember pacing like a caged animal in the shock of it all, and coming back to the bedside where I stared at one of those old-timey pictures of us on the wall, in a teal frame, which I'd hung only days earlier. Suddenly, I am in the hallway, down on my knees, screaming still. Then on the floor, in the bedroom, calling my best friends, the first words I say, over & over, “You have to come over. You HAVE to come over!” followed by barely breathing words, “It's Drew. He was in a crash...... he... didn't make it...” I am lost in space. Gasping. Grasping at anything I can, but nothing exists. I am plummeting through an empty black void – a vast nothing. It is somewhere not earthly. In the explosive event of his death, I have left my body too. It is 8pm, June 12, 2012. I am 29 years old. And the love of my life, my future husband, is dead.

- -

It was a helicopter crash. He was working his first big contract up in Washington state doing agricultural flying. He was supposed to be gone for 3 months, but in the first week, while riding along with another pilot to scout out the job, the pilot hit a power line and they went down into a tree. Drew was killed almost instantly from a severe blow to the chest. I don't have to tell all of you how terrifying and disorienting those first weeks were… how lost I was. 

In the weeks before he died, we talked excitedly about the future and about getting married. I found the ring just a week before the crash and I later found out... he was planning to propose to me as soon as he returned from his trip. Although he never had the chance to propose, one night on the phone that week, he said to me, “what if I were to ask you soon?” I did the usual ruining-of-the-moment by trying to be logical about planning and coordinating... and then I stopped myself, and said with all the love in my heart and a big smile, “Whenever you ask me, I will say yes.” I  could hear his smile all the way from Washington to Texas, it was that big. That is why, although we never got to the true proposal, I will refer to him as my fiancé.

For a month I stayed with his family near Austin. I tried to go back home to Dallas,  go back to work and routine. I made it only 4 days. Routine wasn't helping me like people said it would. I was already unhappy at my job and could not see how I could ever deal with that on top of all my grief. I had friends, but no family in Dallas. I knew in my heart that staying wasn't right for me. I could feel him telling me to leave Dallas... not to run away from it, but to run towards what I needed, family. 

This was not my first run-in with death. I lost my Mom to breast cancer when I was nine, and my Dad to heart disease when I was 27. Being without my parents at such a young age has influenced and colored every aspect of my life and who I am. With my siblings also living far away, I'd become part of Drew's family pretty fast. So after he died - when they told me to come and stay with them at their ranch near Austin - it was a no brainer for me.

Within 3 months of his death, I quit my job, rallied all my incredible friends in Dallas to help me pack everything into boxes and get it into storage, piled my two cats and a carload of essentials into my hatchback and left Dallas in the dust. I got a part time job at an art gallery in Austin, which was something I'd always wanted to do. It was easy work that surrounded me with creativity and art and amazing people. It helped.

In the rest of my time, I did a lot of what I did when I lost my parents… I made art. Hiked around in the countryside, wrote endlessly, took a lot of photos, sat and stared quietly sometimes for hours at the hills and trees. I started painting for the first time in my life, and found it helped me to express some of the pain. I started selling some of my art here and there and showing it at a few galleries and shows. I started my Our 1000 Days blog to record my journey and our story. I listened to all kinds of music from classical to heavy metal, and took some art classes like welding and clay sculpting and jewelry-making. I went to a lot of art galleries and festivals just to be around art. I found that exposing myself to new things - whether appreciating art or watching documentaries or making things in a class - helped to give me a break from the emotions and helped me find some way to still see the wonder in the world. Sometimes, like with painting, it also ended up being a way to get some really deep emotions out. Art in all its forms has saved my life.

I don't know why I decided to change everything after he died, except to say that for me, that life died and I no longer had any desire to try and continue it. I wanted his death to change everything. I wanted it to propel me off into some completely alternate direction, some big great unknown. I wanted it to help me take the chances I never took, and try the things I never tried. I wanted his death to alter me beautifully and exactly as much as his life did. I realize this may not be the usual way people deal with this sort of thing, but I guess it is just my way of making some meaning from it all.

- - -

This pretty much brings us up to now. The gallery I've been working at is closing in just a few weeks, so right as I am beginning to write to you, there is another part of this journey that is ending. It's pretty scary, as that had become some part of my new normal… and other than doing some design work for my mother-in-law (although I am not formally their daughter-in-law, it's just easier for us all to refer to each other this way now, and so we do), I really have no steady income and no concrete idea where my life is going to go from here. It's all wide open.

But I have some ideas. Before he died I had only dreams of being a writer and an artist and making a different in people's lives with my creativity. Since he died, I have dropped everything to pursue those dreams (albeit at a snails pace, because I'm also dealing with the grief). I have sold some of my art, written many pieces that I am very proud of, and gained a great deal of confident in myself as an artist and someone who can help people. That's a big thing for me to admit… because honestly, deep down, there is still a part of me that doesn't believe I am big enough to ever help anyone. But slowly the part of me that knows I can is gaining momentum.

I have no clue how anything will unfold in the next year or two or ten. All I know is that I've lost my mother, my father, and the love of my life, all before the age of 30. I've been dealing with death and grief and learning to live through it for over 20 years already, and I'm only 31. I'd have to be a complete idiot not to take that as a sign to help others out somehow. So I'm setting my compass there and letting go, trusting that someone out there - perhaps a particularly handsome pilot I know - will be guiding me.

Flame

from here

Some days I wander around the place a little aimlessly, crying off and on in an almost distracted way. Going from calm, humming, puttering mode to ugly crying, hands-over-face-snotty-mess and back again, easily. Today I was in this phase of back and forth, talking to Dave, working on a poster for a friend, and doing laundry when it occurred to me that I will have to protect my delicate urge to do something new with my life. I will have to think of that tiny flame as a precious, precious thing and guard it, fight for it, claw and gnaw my way to it, until it is a roaring bonfire. I will have to be like my own little superhero, inside myself, beating back thoughts of doubt and fear. I have to bludgeon the hell out of them or they’ll extinguish the little flame. I have to build a little shelter around it and tend it.

I sat at the desk in front of the window, taking a little break from drawing and talking out loud to Dave. It’s one of those days here when the sun keeps playing peekaboo with the clouds and it suddenly broke through a thick clot of steel gray and shone down directly on me. I thought of Dave sending me that sunbeam and realized how much his death has made me the kind of person who entertains thoughts like “my dead husband sent me a sunbeam”, instead of explaining it away with science and coincidence. Now, it’s simple. Nothing is explainable anymore. Nothing is impossible. If Dave could be taken from this life like he was, than anything is possible.  And I honestly don’t care if the sunbeams come from Dave or not. I don’t care what might be true. Only what could be.

That sunbeam was like a blessing. Encouragement from the Universe (which to me, IS Dave. They are indistinguishable to me).

You can do it. You can do what most people try without success to do. You can fiercely protect the urge to find happiness. You can beat back the fear of taking the leap and let the flame grow. You can do what you thought you couldn’t. And, in fact, that is exactly why you should do it. Because you thought you couldn’t.

I want to write and make art and see how those things make others happy. Or changed. Or different in some way. I want to do those things because I want to, not because they will make me a living. What I want has to come first and the rest will come along for the ride. This is the hardest thing for me to tell myself. I’m the daughter of a man who had a depression mentality. He worked his ass off because that’s what you did. You didn’t take time for “yourself” because that was ludicrous and self-serving. You did what would bring in the money whether you liked it or not. You go to school to get a good job and make money. Period. And I was with someone with similar values for 15 years. The voice of logic is very loud and convincing.

Hey, the economy sucks and you are giving up a job that pays well and has great benefits AND gives you tons of time off. ARE YOU NUTS?!

Well yes, I am, but that’s beside the point. Maybe I might have to work at a job I don’t love so I can do what I love. But maybe it’s possible to make a living doing what I love, too. It could happen. It might take sacrifice. It might take hard work. It might be scary, scary stuff, but it could happen.

So I’ll keep tending that flame and protecting it like a mama bear protects her vulnerable little cub. Keep it close and warm and treat it like the miracle it is. And I'll keep letting the sunbeams remind me that I'm on the right track.